Experiment · Apple News · Featured Rate
Does "What to Know" headline formula improve Featured placement rates?active
Type: formula comparison ·
Generated: 2026-04-08
Result: Result is statistically significant. The metric increased (56.2% vs. 26.6% — 2.11× lift, p=0.017).
Hypothesis: What to Know headlines get Featured by Apple at a significantly higher rate than untagged baseline headlines
This is a formula comparison using the full 2025 Apple News dataset. No editorial
intervention — we're measuring whether the formula's association with Featured placement
holds across the full year of data, not just the Q2 snapshot.
The main site (Finding 2) reports 62% Featured rate for What to Know (n=21). This
experiment compares that against the untagged baseline across all n to confirm the
chi-square result and check whether the signal is consistent.
Comparison
Statistics
| Group | n | Featured rate | Lift | p-value | Significant? |
|---|
| A — Untagged | 2,144 | 26.6% | — | 0.0173 | Yes ✓ |
| B — What To Know | 16 | 56.2% | 2.11× |
Test: Chi-square.
Platform: apple_news.
α = 0.05.